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July 31, 2017

The HP Pavilion All-in-One 27 comes with 16GB of Intel Optane Memory, making it one of the first PCs to ship with the impressively fast caching storage. Intel calims that Optane Memort is "revolutionary – the first all-new class of memory in 25 years."

IDrive Online Backup announced a new feature to assist consumers and businesses in the recovery of data after ransomware attacks or other disasters. IDrive Snapshots are a historical view of the backed up data in your IDrive account that helps you to perform point-in-time recovery of your important files.

India's Icici Bank has rolled out a new ATM feature that allows the instant disbursal of personal loans. The service allows existing salaried customers to get a qualified personal loan in their savings account instantly, in a completely digital and paperless manner.

Despite their undeniable convenience for cash access and ongoing innovations in screen and back-end technology, ATMs have never quite caught on for marketing purposes. However, as a dispensary of currency and convenience, the ATM after 50 years remains golden.

Skimmers that transmit pilfered card data wirelessly via GSM text messages and other mobile-based communications methods are not new; they have been present — if not prevalent — in ATM skimming devices for ages. This is the first instance KrebsOnSecurity is aware of in which such SMS skimmers have been found inside gas pumps, and that matches the experience of several states hardest hit by pump skimming activity.

App wrapping — the process of applying security policies to a mobile application such as email or a custom-built business app — can help protect corporate data without changing an app's looks or functionality.

The Smart Payment Association launched its latest insight paper exploring the potential of payments in driving the global wearable tech market. This new paper from the SPA explores the wearable payment technology options already on the market and looks forward to what's on the horizon for the coming years.

Traditional antivirus can't keep pace with today's threats. Historically, an AV researcher might see 10,000 viruses in a career. Today there are over 700,000 per day. Machine learning is the only way to combat today’s attackers. Here's how one start-up - Cylance - is using machine learning to fight a better fight.

According to a recent research paper presented by three Google researchers, more than 95% of all Bitcoin payments collected from ransomware victims have been cashed out via a Russian cryptocurrency exchange, called BTC-e, since 2014. The researchers followed the step-by-step money trail and got a look at the evolving ecosystem of ransomware families, which already helped make cyber-thieves at least $25 million in the last two years.

Of more than half of all small-to midsized businesses (SMBs) infected with ransomware in the past year, attackers demanded ransom of $1,000 or less - a drop in the bucket in comparison to the downtime these attacks cause, a new report shows. Downtime-wise, 27% were down for one- to eight hours; 23%, nine- to 16 hours; 24%, 17- 24 hours; and 15%, 25- to 100 hours.

Many FIs are plagued by inconsistent online and offline capabilities, and generic consumer propositions. To overcome these fundamental issues, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) says financial institutions must embrace a "bionic" a strategy. According to BCG, a bionic transformation essentially consists of three interrelated elements....

Digital bitcoin wallet Abra is introducing its digital money transfer application to a vast landscape of new users thanks to its integration with American Express, the companies announced. This integration will allow American Express cardholders to fund their Abra wallets as well as instantly send payments or withdraw cash across the globe by using Bitcoin and avoiding exchange rates.

Checks have been in decline in the U.S. since the mid-1990s, but up until a decade ago, they remained Americans' favorite method of payment other than cash. Although electronic payments, debit cards, and credit cards are more popular these days, the rate of checks' decline has slowed, according to a Federal Reserve payment study from last year.

Is PFM dead? If not, financial institutions should kill it, and move on to financial management features that will really help users, according to a report on the subject released this week by financial consulting firm Celent. Report authors Dan Latimore and Stephen Greer make the argument that FIs shouldn't be focusing on PFM, so much as PFE: personal financial experiences.

The growing trend of organizations creating their own edge delivery networks has a major payoff. They can service their applications via these networks to enable greater resilience and performance for their users.

Last year, 43% of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely, according to a survey of more than 15,000 adults by Gallup. Those numbers are growing: The share who said they spent a day or less per week working remotely shrank substantially from 2012 to 2016, falling to 25% from 34%. On the other hand, the share that reported working remotely four to five days a week grew by nearly the same amount, rising to 31% from 24%.

When it comes to security standards, the newness of SD-WAN technologies might raise questions among security professionals when it comes to HIPAA, PCI and other compliance regulations. Security and networking are merging, blurring the definition of the classical firewalls. Already Cato Networks is offering an SD-WAN service in the cloud with built-in NGFW, SGW, and malware protection. Other vendors, such as Open Systems, are providing best-of-breed security service prepackaged into their appliances.

Layer has released a new customer engagement-enabling solution as part of the trend toward more and better engagement options for contact centers. The San Francisco-based company launched its Conversation Design System earlier this month, giving orgaizations new tools to help quickly build and customize conversational experiences "in just minutes."

Chatbots are becoming increasingly influential in day to day life. These programs have been developed to aid in a range of industries, from simple banking transactions, to healthcare enquiries, and Juniper forecasts that chatbots will be responsible for cost savings of over $8 billion per annum by 2022, up from $20 million this year.